San Jose Earthquakes’ Wondolowski, Salinas among longest-tenured at 1 MLS club

Neither Chris Wondolowski nor Shea Salinas are technically one-club men, but both players have been with the San Jose Earthquakes for a long time and are really linked with the Quakes in the public imagination.

It turns out, they are in fact among the longest-serving active players at an MLS club at present.

Sporting Kansas City had a story on their website that noted they currently have the longest-tenured head coach in MLS (Peter Vermes) and longest-tenured player with one club (Graham Zusi), both starting at the club in their current roles in 2009.

So Zusi pips Wondo in terms of being the longest-tenured player, because he was drafted by the club and signed at the start of the 2009 season, while Wondolowski was traded to the Earthquakes by the Houston Dynamo in June 2009. Just a few months apart!

Meanwhile, Salinas joined up with the Quakes for good in 2012, and that puts him No. 5 in terms of active players with the longest tenure at one club, behind just Zusi, Wondo, Russell Teibert of the Vancouver Whitecaps and Diego Chara of the Portland Timbers, the latter two who joined their clubs in 2011.

So all in all, it’s pretty unusual to have teammates playing together for so long in MLS these days. While some players do settle down at one club for a while, movement is pretty common in this league, and that makes Wondo and Salinas as the bedrock of the club more notable.

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